Ingrid Walker Fields
Entertaining Knowledge:
(Popular) Cultural Literacy in the United States
published in
Oregon Humanities, 1999
Popular culture summons improvisational communities--show audiences,
fan clubs, chat groups. . . It saturates everyday conversation. It overlaps
with politics. It circulates the materials with which people splice together
identities. It forms the imagescape and soundtrack through which we think
and feel about who we are or—as film critic Robert Warshow once put
it—who we wish to be and fear we might become.
—Todd Gitlin, U.S. News & World Report, June 1, 1998
On the way to work this morning, I encountered: a radio review of new programs in the
fall television line-up, a favorite song sampled in a radio spot, billboards promoting
Internet services, an elevator debate about the alleged novelty of The Blair Witch Project,
a colleague's description of the plot of John Grisham's latest novel, and the ubiquitous tshirt representing universities, Nike, and Star Wars characters. It was a typical commute
through the landscape of popular stories and icons that most Americans traverse daily.
Todd Gitlin observes that popular culture is not only the social glue that binds us, but a
territory of conflict in its representation of our fantasies and fears. Seeing popular culture
as so forcefully pervasive suggests that it is what John Storey calls "a terrain of exchange"
where social meanings are made and circulated. We negotiate this terrain daily and those
negotiations form a sort of cultural literacy without which most of us would be lost.
Throughout my commute, I recognized popular stories and icons, considered their
recontextualization, compared them to other popular stories, and weighed their social and
aesthetic value. These acts of reading culture locate me in my contemporary world.
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Reading Culture
Popular culture—particularly the stories we tell ourselves in popular forms—assumes
varying levels of cultural literacy, from recognition of brand names to the history of
creatures in horror films. While ignorance of any particular narrative, such as Star Wars,
is not socially debilitating, ignorance of the implications of a narrative can be a gap in
one's knowledge and perception of the contemporary world, and such a gap potentially
impoverishes one's relation to that world. Knowing that Star Wars is but part of a greater
body of science fiction that explores, among many issues, the interrelation of man and
technology is a kind of cultural knowledge.
But such popular cultural knowledge is further subdivided. For example, staying within
the science fiction genre, knowing what a cyborg is—part human, part cybernetic
construct, like Star Wars' Darth Vadar—and considering why it appears again and again
in our popular stories, leads to yet other observations and questions. Contemporary
cyborg stories, including The Terminator, RoboCop, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and
William Gibson's fiction to name a few, articulate many different fantasies and realities
about the alliance between humans and technology. Cyborg narratives, and their implicit
and explicit social critique, reveal unease with our technological dependence, even as
these same tales demonstrate a continuing admiration for our technological prowess.
Although cyborg stories are only one of the myriad narratives we encounter regularly as
we live in popular culture, looking at what we gain from thinking about them exemplifies
why popular culture deserves serious study, thought, and teaching.
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The cyborg blurs a boundary between what we understand to be very different forms of
sentience. In classifying and identifying cyborgs, the conflicted nature of this cultural
representation becomes evident. How and where each cyborg story draws the line
between man and machine requires us to reconsider our definitions of humanity, while
the range of possibilities in the human/technological interface expresses many
apprehensions and concerns. When Arnold Schwarzenegger's anthropomorphic
Terminator bleeds, it reveals circuitry and a metal skeleton underneath its soft tissue.
Eventually it becomes its true self, a gleaming robot who can be "killed" only when a
human uses another machine to crush it. Designed to destroy humans, the alien and
alienating Terminator exemplifies a future in which our technology is in control.
Other stories represent the cyborgian threat as a more intimate power struggle between
man and machine. In RoboCop, a police officer, Murphy, shot down in the line of duty is
resurrected as a cyborg: a human arm and brain incorporated into a newly programmed
body. These minimal human proportions suggest a less optimistic inversion of those of
the "bionic" man and woman of 1980’s television (just as Lindsay Wagner, the bionic
woman in the 1980’s, becomes the nemesis of time-travelling cyborgs in the Terminator
films). Although Murphy's remaining glimmer of humanity eventually mediates
his/RoboCop's mechanization, he expresses great anguish about his resurrection.
RoboCop presents a technological version of Frankenstein's monster: remaking man as
machine becomes the ultimate threat to mankind. This line of popular culture imaginings
has a deep history.
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Cyborg visions may be social as well as psychological. In recent Star Trek: The Next
Generation television series, the Borg is a collective enemy, a technological hive mind
that absorbs individuals of humanoid species and wipes out their individuality. Story lines
about the fall of the Borg and the dilemmas of individuals separated from it meditate on
one level about the fall of Soviet-style communism in Europe, and on another (like so
many Star Trek stories) about the limits of liberal individualist culture's capacity to
tolerate cultural difference. One of 1999's science fiction films, The Matrix, exploits both
cyborgian dangers of technological control, and of intimate man-machine struggles,
through the tyrannical potential of an Internet-like artificial intelligence. Here, the
association between man and machine moves beyond the cyborg toward an even more
comprehensive, domineering relationship. The matrix fulfills human fears of becoming
completely subordinated to our technological devices, by deluding humans into becoming
unconscious hosts to its parasitic reliance on human bodies.
Certainly, such consideration of the representational dimensions of the cyborg is not
required to enjoy these films. But the viewer or reader who encounters the cyborg again
and again may wonder at its predominance. One way of viewing the exchange between
these stories, the world, and ourselves is to understand fears of technology not simply as
the product of Hollywood, but as a tension underlying our everyday experience that
Hollywood addresses. Even before Henry Adams proclaimed that the dynamo would be
the metaphor for life in the twentieth-century, Americans expressed anxiety about their
relationship with machines. Yet, one hundred years later, we live in a culture of
technological proliferation. Growing frustration about our dependence on computers and
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the disappearance of human contact in business due to ATMs, automated phone systems,
and the Internet parallels record consumption of these technologies.
Seemingly futuristic cyborgian concepts become manifest in our world, marking degrees
of technological intervention in human lives. Some Americans fear a burgeoning reliance
on computers even as students literally supply the power for body-fitted computers in a
research project at MIT. Surveillance and tracking devices erode a sense of privacy
without ensuring our safety. The once-distant frontiers of genetic engineering are no
longer unknown. Programs and films such as X Files, Gattaca, and even the Dilbert
comic strip draw from this same cultural lexicon of technological innovation and control.
Of course, these few examples denote only one point in a constellation of intertwined
knowledges, theories, fantasies, social issues, and scientific realities—coded as, among
other things, the cyborg in our popular imagination.
Teaching Popular Culture
Teaching popular culture in a small liberal arts classroom reminds me that assumptions
about culture are problematic. Academia's aesthetic and historical valuation of texts and
subjects of study is distant from the students' experience of the world. Though the value
of popular culture studies in academia is much debated, this question has become
increasingly irrelevant, as popular culture becomes a more insistent part of our lives. John
Fiske writes that "popular culture is more a culture of process than of products." The
question at the heart of my courses is about this process: how do the popular stories we
tell ourselves convey the notion we call culture? If culture—our lived social relations,
behaviors, rites and practices—is also a dynamic enacted between reader (or viewer) and
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story, how might we become more aware of this process? Which stories engage us? Such
an inquiry, when brought to the surface, becomes the grounds for a secondary inquiry
about what is popular and why—and what these stories say about us and to us as the
readers who celebrate them, participating in a culture.
The armature of culture becomes more visible, and thus more open to critical reflection,
when related stories are juxtaposed in the classroom. For example, my class considers
why Americans audiences embrace one kind of gangster while rejecting and vilifying
another. Mario Puzo's The Godfather, which lionizes a cop-killing Italian American
gangster, was a best-selling novel (1969) and become Francis Ford Coppola's awardwinning film (1972). Ice T's song "Cop Killer", which proclaims cop-killing by an
African American gangsta, evoked a firestorm of criticism and threatened censorship
until Ice T pulled the song from the Body Count album (1992). Reading the codes
underlying these representations suggests much about how and why we find these
gangsters and their cop-killing to have very different appeals. The key in teaching is
drawing students into seeing and interpreting the codes.
Ice T and other gangsta rappers such as Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Doggy Dog
manipulate mainstream America's fears of insurgent black men. Ice T observes that white
America has no frame of reference for the language and social reality of gangsta rap. He's
probably right: my students, predominantly white Southern Christian conservatives,
empathize with and even admire the cultural codes they find in narratives like The
Godfather. Many go to great lengths to interpret the values embedded in a conflicted
representation of the family as a business at war. With gangsta rap, however, they are less
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willing to make that negotiation: the narrative is foreboding—alienated, and alienating. In
general, my students read gangsta rap as more violent and self-serving than the Mafia in
popular stories. They particularly dislike its accusations and find its politics obscured by
the barrage of four-letter words. My students do not find similar representational
strategies of colorful language, romanticized violence, and social accusation to be as
alienating in Mafia stories like Goodfellas, however. These elements in Mafia narratives
seem to be part of the social context in which self-preservation seems more acceptable.
Or, perhaps the Mafia seems less connected to a dangerous social reality. Indeed, I
wonder how young Kentuckians feel that they have more in common with young hoods
from 1920's-70's New York than 1990's Los Angeles. The answer, surely, takes us back to
their cultural literacy—the stories they've already encountered about mafiosi and
gangstas.
American audiences have sustained a love affair with the gangster since the 1930's when
real-life, Hollywood, and pulp novel gangsters engaged their attention. From Little
Caesar to Al Capone, the gangster became a significant depression-era popular figure.
Contemporary popular culture has adapted this image, over the past thirty years focusing
most often on the Mafia, in film, popular fiction, and television. A recent incarnation, the
critically acclaimed cable TV series The Sopranos, exemplifies one feature that sustains
this story's relevance: the mob family as drama.
What we might now call Don Vito Corleone's family values established a significant
landmark for gangster stories. Unlike the purely ruthless gangster figures before him, the
Don conveys moral authority. According to John Cawalti, Puzo's representation of the
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Don stood in opposition to the failure of contemporary social institutions such as the
impersonal corporation and the declining family. "There is a tribal closeness about the
criminal organization . . . and the Don is its theocratic center." In this patriarchal
representation, Puzo presents a subculture in which the gangster is no longer a lone wolf
but a dedicated family man, a formula that has become a landmark in Mafia stories.
While The Godfather and similar representations continue to enjoy popularity, fullfledged romanticization of the Mafia has declined. Goodfellas, Married to the Mob,
Analyze This and other narratives demonstrate the tension within popular culture's
depiction of the Mafia as an organization which strives to maintain a moral center even as
it promotes and exploits corruption, violence, and greed. The Sopranos, depicts la familia
mired in the personal and social tensions typical of contemporary American life. The
success of this program may be in its revision of the Mafia family story in a context
familiar in television (and life): dysfunctional families sustained by self-oriented
individuals.
The allure of a patriarchal organization upholding disappearing social values mitigates the
real nature of the mob's power: violence and intimidation. The attraction of this narrative
may be in its ultimate message. As Albert Mobilio writes, the mob story is essentially
"about our deepest wish: unrestrained self-gratification." Perhaps the deepest indication
of The Godfather's social power, however, is how many actual mafiosi have confessed
that it is the model to which they aspired. In uncovering the Mafia story's appealing
elements, we encounter complex negotiations involving many social codes of behavior
and values. Mobilio contends that Mafia stories "provide a rigged moral measuring stick";
by comparison, our lives and shortcomings are not so bad. The irony of our appreciation
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of the mob, Cawalti observes, is that a family of criminals is ultimately more interesting
and morally satisfying for us than our own social reality.
Representations of African American gangstas do not inspire the same level of interest
and moral satisfaction for most popular culture audiences in the United States. Gangsta
stories are most prevalent in gangsta rap where gangsta rappers tend to be figures who
gesture towards a history of American gangsters, yet cast themselves specifically as
public enemies. In contrast to the powerful mythos of the Mafia's social/family values, the
gangsta figure employs the public enemy designation to his advantage. Gangstas seek
power and renown as outlaws and, unlike Vito Corleone, do not seek business alliance
and social integration with American society. The outlaw identity offers a position from
which gangstas critique the corruption of social institutions, from the justice system to
capitalist economics. The outlaw persona glorifies the gangsta lifestyle and independence
from this system. As Ice T claims: "When I die, there'll be bullets and gun smoke. Ya
don't like my life style? Fuck you! I'm rollin with the new jack crew. And I'm a hustler."
One of the founding figures of the genre, Ice T is the self-proclaimed OG or "original
gangsta." His music, along with that of other groups like N.W.A. (Niggaz With Attitude),
depicts the gangsta as a savvy desperado making his living and reputation in the streets of
south central Los Angeles. Because the rise of gangsta rap paralleled the spread of gang
warfare in L.A. and other cities, the gangsta's salience as a popular figure is predicated on
his forceful reality—thousands of young African and Latino Americans played out this
fiction with real consequences and a real body count. When several of these gangstas
crossed over into the music industry, some American audiences balked. As Ice T has
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stated, society wasn't ready for people like him to assimilate into the mainstream.
Gangstas' social alienation is manifested in verbal acts of bravado that set them apart as
outlaw hedonists, whose sexually explicit and violent lifestyle debunks several of the
values essential to Mafia stories.
Ice T's pop-culture versatility makes him an excellent figure to study. In leaving the street,
he has sustained a career as a gangsta rapper while also heading a crossover hardcore
metal band (Body Count), starred in major motion pictures (New Jack City and others),
written, produced, and starred in television (Players) and film projects. He has played
many roles, from a crusading antidrug cop to a rehabilitated criminal. In his OG figure,
Ice T engages with the conflicted nature of its persona: he plays both to gangsta's actionbased origins and the gangsta rapper's verbal tools of dissent. Some of his songs depict
the thrill and harshness of gangsta life. Others aim to educate gangstas and mainstream
Americans about the politics that produce inner city streets. Songs such as Freedom of
Speech: Watch What You Say, which responds to attempts at censoring gangsta rap,
confront bad faith in American politics. Even as other rappers leave or critique the genre,
Ice T's work continues to transform this popular narrative, with increasing critical
awareness. His most recent album, Return of the Real, parodies the social response to
gangstas as public enemies, addressing the problematic nature of the music industry,
African Americans' distrust of their own successful figures, ongoing socioeconomic
limitations for African Americans, and the closed community of the gangsta "syndicate"
as the real danger—a trap for those youth who have bought into the popular narrative's
depiction of the gangsta's power and prestige.
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Other factors underlie the different public reception of these gangster and gangsta
characterizations, including genre, ethnicity, historical and sociopolitical context. One of
gangsta rap's major differences from representations of the Mafia is its medium. Rappers
are self-appointed spokesmen, exhorting one audience and indicting another. The nature
of this outlaw posture is to directly and vociferously critique and reject the social system
on which the rest of us depend. While the Godfather rejects our social system, he also
maintains business and diplomatic relations with American society. Gangstas, by contrast,
exhort literal or figurative war with the American institutions that disenfranchise them.
Although both narratives depict cop-killing, neither breaks out of its fictional bounds to
inspire real-life cop-killing. And yet, "Cop Killer" evoked a debate about its power to do
just that. Is this because of its rhetorical form—direct personal confrontation of social
institutions? Or is it because inner city gangstas were more prevalent in news media than
mafiosi? The context of events may matter. A few weeks after the release of Ice T's song,
L.A. erupted in response to the verdict in the Rodney King police brutality case.
In examining these popular representations, my students and I—and, by extension, public
audiences that take popular culture seriously—must confront the conflicts in our notions
about these gangster/gangsta stories. Ultimately, the Italian American gangster may be
more appealing because these narratives foreground family preservation, social mobility
through business, and anti-drug themes. Gangsta rap narratives may be less appealing
because as self-oriented survivors, these characters reject a social system rather than
building their own within it. But their options differ, as well. Unlike mafiosi, gangstas
generally do not have the option of pursuing socioeconomic mobility through a financial
liaison with police officials. The major economic source for gangstas in the inner city has
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been the drug trade—another focus for vilification of the narratives that depict this social
reality. Assimilation—or at least a mutual tolerance—is not part of the gangsta rap selfpresentation. Public enemy means just that: it means business, but not public commerce.
Cultivating Popular Cultural Literacy
I began by suggesting that everyday negotiation of the terrain of popular culture in itself
constitutes a form of cultural literacy. Yet for the most part that literacy is
unselfconscious, or extends its reflections only to poses of knowing irony, accepting the
definitions of sophistication offered within popular media themselves. I have also tried to
suggest that popular culture can be subjected to deeper and more serious inquiry that
creates self-knowledge. Interestingly, exclusion of popular culture from the realm of
serious thought leaves the mix of lack of reflection and sophistical poses unchallenged.
A more deliberate literacy about popular culture is becoming something of a social
concern. Organizations in New Mexico and Oregon focus on cultivating media literacy.
These programs train educators, physicians, and other professionals who work with
children how to deconstruct media: to look at the ways in which it creates particular
narratives, and recognize a medium's means of sublimating codes. Generally, their aim is
to help those who teach and interact with American children to become (and make others)
wiser media consumers. These projects assume that there is a need for a more informed
popular cultural knowledge—that we can benefit from becoming more literate readers of
popular media.
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Todd Gitlin quotes Philip Roth's famous comment that America is full of "animated talk
about second-rate movies by first-rate people." While often true, Roth's remark gestures
towards a typical conceptual bifurcation of "culture" into popular (low brow) and fine
arts, belle letters, and cinema (high brow). My focus in writing about and teaching
popular culture is exploration of the innumerable interstices between the narratives of
popular culture's stories and our lives. In that exploration, particularly with my students, I
have found that the product of our animated exchange about popular culture can be firstrate: a powerful form of knowledge that expands our ability to act thoughtfully and
critically in the world.
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Works Cited
John Cawalti, "The Mythology of Crime and its Formulaic Embodiments," in Adventure,
Mystery, and Romance (University of Chicago Press, 1976).
John Fiske, "Popular Culture," in Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia
and Thomas McLaughlin (University of Chicago Press, 1990, 1995) 322.
Todd Gitlin, "Pop Goes the Culture." U.S. News and World Report, 1 June 98: 70-71.
Ice T, "New Jack Hustler", Original Gangster: O.G., Sire Records (1991).
Albert Mobilio, "Made Men of Letters: Our Thing About the Cosa Nostra", Harper’s,
October 1977: 68-78.
John Storey, An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1993)